159 stories in February, 2012
Lady Gaga, Winfrey target bullying
Lady Gaga and her mother Cynthia Germanotta launched the Born This Way Foundation, a youth empowerment initiative, at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre on Feb. 29.
During a lecture that is part of a series of master classes sponsored by Harvard’s Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard Professor Ingrid Monson explored the genius behind John Coltrane’s 1965 jazz album “A Love Supreme.”
The third John Harvard Book Celebration Lecture featured Harvard doctors and best-selling authors Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband, who tackled the topic “Your Medical Mind: How to Decide When Experts Disagree.” The next lecture is March 1 at the Parker Hill Branch of the Boston Public Library in Roxbury.
A Harvard law professor, former judge, and ardent feminist points to the cultural impediments that have stalled feminism’s quest for an equal workplace.
Shining a spotlight into darkness
Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Helen Whitney opens a three-day series of William Belden Noble lectures titled “Spiritual Landscapes: A Life in Film.” Her work draws out examples of how faith can foster not only inner peace, but also public turmoil.
Circumstances that color our perception
Dozens of Harvard faculty and students gathered at Emerson Hall on Feb. 23 to ponder the nature of perception with Ned Block, the Silver Professor of Philosophy, Psychology and Neural Science at New York University (NYU) and one of the country’s leading thinkers on consciousness. Block's lecture, “How Empirical Facts about Attention Transform Traditional Philosophical Debates about the Nature of Perception,” explored prevailing notions of perception by looking at how we see and pay attention to objects we encounter.
Funding success, and finding it
Four years ago, Harvard’s Office of Technology Development launched its Accelerator Fund, a $10 million revolving account to be used as a bridge across the “valley” between creation and development. The fund is proving to be just such a bridge.
The business of changing the world
What will the next generation of social entrepreneurs need to succeed? Analysts debated the future of the budding field — and Harvard students demonstrated it — at Harvard Kennedy School on Feb. 24.
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